Gaming addiction: a symptom hiding the real problem?

NIMF Founder Dr. Walsh is concerned about game addiction, but trying to …

The National Institute on Media and Family releases an annual report card for the gaming industry, and this year's report painted a very rosy picture indeed. Unfortunately, those findings were somewhat tainted by the knowledge that the NIMF accepted a cash donation from the Entertainment Software Association. Next year's report card could be very interesting.

The NIMF's founder, Dr. David Walsh, sat down with Gamecyte, and discussed many things; the entire article is worth your time. The part that jumped out at us, however, concerned addiction to games. Allow me to quote at length:

I think what's happening, not just here in the United States but in other countries as well, is that there's some percentage of gamers—and no one quite knows what the percentage is, different surveys have put it at different percentages—but for some percentage of gamers, it seems to become an obsession. Other things in their life get neglected, sometimes even their health gets neglected, their grades start to suffer, relationships start to suffer, and so it starts to bear all the behavioral hallmarks of an addiction. And so I think that's why the term has emerged. Of course, the term itself is controversial, because there are some, particularly in academia, who say that addiction signifies something that has to do with a chemical change. A dependency to a chemical. But we do have other behaviors that are recognized as addictions, the most common example to bear would be gambling addiction.

He also argues that games can be more addictive than other kinds of media due to the interactive nature of the art form. Before we start getting out the pitchforks however, he's not after the industry. "What my hope is is that there’s not a backlash against anyone," he stated. "What myhope is is that there's a recognition that for some people, this is aproblem, and we have to figure out A.) how to prevent it from happeningin the first place, or B.) for those for whom it does become a problem,figure out how to help them effectively." He points out that we don't try to ban alcohol because some people abuse it, and that casinos still have a place even though some may compulsively gamble.

I've known more than a few people who have fallen into unhealthy gaming habits in the past, and in almost every case the gaming has been a symptom, not part of the problem. The people who gamed compulsively were suffering from depression, isolation, or were dealing with other social anxieties. The games made the affects of these problems worse and gave the people something to use to escape their day-to-day existence but, if you removed the games completely, the root problems would still be there. Contrast that with alcohol, where the problems stem from the bottle in many cases.

Addiction in any form is a tricky, subtle thing to deal with, but it seems like a hard sell to say that games themselves are addictive; if you introduce a game like World of WarCraft to a person whose life is already balanced and who is basically happy, things are going to be fine. If someone with existing mental problems gets a hold of the game, it could easily make those problems worse, and to the outside observer it would be easy to mistake the symptom for the disease.

I'm not saying that gaming addiction isn't a real thing, but when you know someone is suffering from it, the solution isn't taking the game away; the best therapy will happen when someone tries to figure out what made disappearing into that virtual world so attractive in the first place.